links list: google reader edition

Just moved my RSS feeds from iGoogle to Google Reader this Sunday. So…yeah. Suddenly, it’s a lot easier to skim content as well as headlines on the various blogs I read and find the stuff that catches my interest. Here’s what I’ve tagged so far this week — just thought I’d be friendly and share the overwhelm with ya’ll!

Feminist Review offers a look a blue cotton gown, a new memoir by nurse-practitioner and one-time midwife, Patricia Harman.

sassymonkey over at blogher reports on the latest adult discovery about the freakish and out-of-control lives of the modern teenager (cue hand-wringing), the genre of YA lit now being labeled trauma porn. Since Katie Roiphe’s weighed in, I might just get irritated enough to blog about it at greater length. I might have to blog about that one at some point. As a feminist, future librarian, not to mention fan of young adult lit and all. ‘Cause there are just so many things wrong with this wailing and gnashing of teeth. But for now, check out sassymonkey’s post, which I think asks entirely legitimately: “I wonder if people live in the same world I do. Teens and trauma porn is so. not. new.”

And her conclusion, which really says it all:

Teens live in the real world and some of them are going through hell and some others think they are going through hell. Sometimes they need to see their world reflected back at them in books. Sometimes they need to see problems that are bigger than their own. And yes, sometimes they need the pink and turquoise backdrops of escapism that authors like Cabot, who have been there themselves, provide. No one part of young adult literature is all good or all bad. Teens are real. Their books should be too.